March 2, 2010 by pmelcher.

How to iTablet the Ipad ? Microsoft is about to reveal something that could bypass the need to carry yet another big thing just to read magazine, newspapers or surf websites. Called the “Mobile Surface” and only to be shown to employees for now (must be extra beta), it is a small portable box that will project an interactive image on any surface.

Look :

 Of course, there is a lot of questions left. Mainly, will it not crash. However, this technology could be integrated in your cellphone ( the smart kind) and, while keeping the size small, allow for higher viewing real estate.  One will have to see how editing an image on a blue table will work out, or keeping your email private in an airplane.

This is however a very interesting development for E-publishing  ( just think of a 3D video or immersive photography) as well as computing in general. More stuff here

Posted in technology, lens, Newsweek, E Reader, magazine, multimedia, slideshow, photojournalism, web 2.0, newspaper, editorial | Print | 1 Comment »

February 24, 2010 by pmelcher.

I know of flowers that raise below the snow to become the freshest , most beautiful of the upcoming spring. I know of others that couldn’t care less about the quality of the soil they grow from, as long as they have sunshine water.

In photography,  they are equivalents. LUZ photo agency, created from the rumbles of the defunct Grazia Neri, is a great example. If you live, work, or just pass through Italy, you are very lucky, as you will certainly will see some of the incredible images they have to offer.

“This is Madness !!”, you might say. In a middle of a recession, where pricing has never been so close to the ground and magazines so recessive,  to offer high quality reportage photography . It’s like jumping off the roof of a skyscraper. Sure. But that is the thinking of the corpocrates and other “9-to-5″ ‘ers that have polluted our landscape with their excel mindset. Luz ( Spanish for “light”) is what Grazia Neri used to be, an act of love. A company created with passion for passion. Like love, it doesn’t make any sense, it’s highly emotional and has a craving for more.

With such representation as Noor, Ed Kashi, or Jim West among many others, it has the firepower to hit right through the walls of convention and blast open many multi page spreads for the pure benefit of amazed readers. It will also certainly amaze us with its technological advance in a short while, as it is staffed with some of the best, and most intelligent minds in our industry.

L’Chaim Luz !! To Life !!

Posted in magazine, technology, license, multimedia, slideshow, photojournalism, editorial | Print | 2 Comments »

February 17, 2010 by pmelcher.

Wired magazine, in the trail of others, has partnered with Adobe Air, to display what their publication will look on a E reader. There are a few interesting points here.

First, for the geeks out there, it is interesting to see that Adobe, whose Flash is not supported by Apple’s Ipad, is now pushing Air  as a delivery platform. There will be a battle out there on what application will be running all these E magazines and Adobe is shooting the first salvo.

The second part is that Wired present this as an addition to their print publication, not as a replacement. As much as they are investing in the new technology, they are not ready to drop their print, web, IPhone apps just for that.

The Third, is that besides a format, there is no mention of hardware. It is supposed that this is for an Ipad, but really, it is for any existing or to be invented color tablet  ( sorry Kindle).

What about photography usage? Well, they are some very compelling statements here.

Images are a key element of this evolution. From 360 to immersible, from stop action to galleries, there are many forms of photography shown. Nothing new indeed, but a new usage certainly. Where do you find stock for 360 photography ? nowhere currently. So where will they go ?  Assignment, surely. Are you ready ? There is stock for panoramas images, but will that be enough ? And is the micro stock community going to plunge into this also ?  Probably.

However, the more important element of photography usage here is the option to share it. Either via email or social networks, almost every image can be shared with a click of one button. Now, we all know that editorial pricing has always been about placement, time and geography. What has never been appropriately addressed with web usage is now going to become standard practice for all editorial. Al thought you have  licensed your  image for a week, a month and for a small side usage, next thing you know it’s all over the web, in different format, given away for free to people you have never heard of. And never will.

Sure, you can go the Getty way. Here, pay me $49 and do whatever you want with the image. I would like to see Getty’s executives faces when one of their $49 image goes viral. Ouch. Na..not a good idea. Images should be license based on usage and usage should be tracked per number of clicks. After all, if an article or an image published on Tablet gets shared a lot, it is all in the benefit of the publication, right ? It’s free marketing. Yet, your image has been instrumental to that sharing action, so shouldn’t you be compensated ?

What do you mean you do not know how much click it has seen ? Do you know how much circulation a magazine has ? Yes, ok, well, with a link, it is even easier to track. They want a sharing option on your images, charge them either an additional flat fee, or a fee per clicks. But please, charge something. You are not Getty. You will not get back in volume what you just gave away for free. Never.

So. first thing first: Add to all your invoices  and delivery statement “NO DIGITAL RIGHTS” . If they want web usage or E Readers, then lets negotiate a different fee. Ask if there will be a sharing option . If yes, then add an additional fee. How much? well, that is up to you to decide.

Be proactive. You will be proud you did.

Posted in celebrity, copyright, license, magazine, technology, E Reader, commercial stock, multimedia, newspaper, editorial, getty, Royalty free, transaction, finance, web 2.0, photojournalism, Microstock | Print | No Comments »

February 16, 2010 by pmelcher.

Fed up of the pseudo intellectualism of most photojournalism awards ? Then go see the winners of the WHNPA “Eyes of History 2010″. Those Guys/Gals are stuck, most of the time, with a very restrictive subject ( aka, POTUS) and yet perform some of the highest form of photography. Furthermore, when you unleash them into a different subject, they eat them up with a passion rarely seen, putting at work what they have taught themselves so well in the confinement of the White House.

A lot of great photography, mostly unseen, from some of the lesser known, and yet probably more talented photojournalists in the world.

 A lot of NPR photographers here ( NPR is the US’s public radio, funded by tax and people’s money). A good example that “public” journalism can be of extremely high quality. If you see only one winning gallery, I urge you to see David Gilkey’s Portfolio ( winner of third place in Portfolio). It’s very Don McCullin with a refreshing twist.

Finally, the World Press Awards should take many lessons: The winners slide shows are big and very visible,  yes, they have a multimedia category and the result, although about politics, are not so politically charged.

Posted in multimedia, magazine, technology, newspaper, photojournalism, editorial, slideshow, news | Print | No Comments »

February 13, 2010 by pmelcher.

So it’s start…Interview magazine, created by Andy Warhol, is currently showcasing what their magazine will look on the iPad. It is mostly a scan version of the magazine with a few added artifacts ( video, share, etc). Use of photogrpahy is still very flat, yet certainly more interactive than a print edition.

 Does it make want to by an IPad? no. Does it make me want to get Interview for the Ipad ? no. But it is certainly a plus. This type of exercise is exactly what  what the publishing, and the photo industry needs. It will make Art directors, as well as photographers, rethink what can be done with the still image, as well as video, sound and imaginative layouts. It will also probably break forever the frequency of publishing, currently segmented in daily, weekly, monthly etc, forcing publishers to adopt a more casual approach.

Hopefully this will trigger a  healthy competition in the publishing world with the result of more and more inventive usage.

Now that the tools are present and becoming affordable, it is time for to the creative communauty to start doing what it does best : Be creative. The foot is on the pedal, let’s accelerate.

Posted in technology, E Reader, magazine, multimedia, slideshow, editorial | Print | No Comments »

February 12, 2010 by pmelcher.

If you like blood, you will love the new crop of World Press Awards winners. There is a lot of it, in full details and in brilliant colors. Hopefully for you, you will not look at the galleries just after eating, the results might not get along with your stomach.

The top winner, an image of a woman on a Tehran roof shooting news during the Iranian election protest shouldn’t have won. Why ? Because it is part of a series of images that Italian photographer Pietro Masturzo has done on the antiquated way Iranians communicated during the uprising. It is much stronger as part of the set than as a standalone. Obviously the jury doesn’t know the difference between a single shot and a narrative. This is not a single shot. It makes it seem that the other images are useless. They are not.

Elsewhere in the prizes, you see a lot of winners depicting the Gaza war from the Palestinian side. Obviously the jury had a political statement to make and they made it loud and clear. Too loud and clear. The result puts in jeopardy their ability the find the real best images rather than those images that agree with their very one sided and opinionated point of view.

The rest of the winners follow a similar pattern . Lot’s of violence and blood, if possible, too much Black and white (They can’t shake off  that old cliche that B/W makes it more..intellectual, more valuable somehow), interrupted with portrait galleries, something that has been plaguing European photojournalism for quite some time.

What will have everybody talking about this year, will be the  “Special Mention, recognizing a frame grab from a video posted on YouTube in June 2009 during the post-election uprising in Iran.”

Awarded to Reuters (?), not only it’s a video grab ( Still photography is dead !!)  , it was shot by an amateur ( here comes the citizen photojournalist !!) and was probably shot on a camera phone ( dump the DLSR, phones are the new cameras !!). Well, you can just imagine the rest.

Finally, true to itself, still no multimedia awards of any kind . Take a look and make a your decision :

Posted in magazine, technology, multimedia, photojournalism, finance, slideshow, news | Print | No Comments »

February 3, 2010 by pmelcher.

It’s not photography that is sick and dying, it’s the people that handle it. Sure, there has been dramatic bankruptcies, like Grazia Neri , l’ Oeil Public and now Eyedea Press ( that one was a long time coming). On the other hand, there more than a billion of images on Flickr, more on Photobucket, and Facebook. There has never been so many cameras in the streets and so many people interested in photography. With the Internet, there has never been such a demand, and need for images. Smartphones, Ipad, tablets, netbooks, are only increasing the demand for stills.

Yet, pro photographer can’t seem to make a living anymore, while photo editors have either no budget or are being laid off by buckets. So what is wrong ? Well, for one, it’s those who manage photography that are sick. None of the old and current guard have any idea how to take advantage of this Tsunami of demand. It’s leaking from all over the place. The only made with Flickr was when the original founders sold it to Yahoo. Since, it’s been bleeding cash. Instead of creating tools to allow members to license it, they passed it on to Getty Images to try and squeeze some money juice out of it. It could take decades, if not century for Yahoo to see a return on investment using this route.

While magazines are dying a slow and painful circulation death, there online counterpart have yet to be succesful in generate the same revenue as they used too . Why, because they keep on trying to replicate online what has been a success in print. The fact that its not working doesn’t seem to bother them. They keep on trying.

Photographers still shoot the same thing, the same way, for a clientele that is shrinking, both in size and resources. They desperately cling to old formulas that they hope will resurface some day. Not going to happen. And finally, photo agencies try to hang on the slippery slop of declining revenue by agreeing to cut fees in the hopes there is a trampoline at the bottom of the hill. Not there.

Everyone is playing the waiting game, hoping that some savior will find the magic solution. In the mean time, they are all guilty of killing photography by undervaluing it. It’s has become a commodity, some say. Other offer ridiculous subscription model, feeling comfort in the fact that mass production Getty does it. All whine all day, all night, all the time.

Stop whining. Do . Try. fail. Try again. fail again. Who cares? You will make progress. And if you are lucky ( or smart), it will work. Better than you had ever expected. It’s not obvious. But the market is there. The current model doesn’t work, we can all agree on that. So, try new ones. Take advice from no one. Just do. It will hurt, it will be frustrating, it will be exhausting, it will feel incredibly useless, it will not work. But it’s so much better than whining all the time. Stop waiting for something to happen. Take control.

Posted in license, multimedia, prosumer, copyright, magazine, commercial stock, technology, focus, flickr, photojournalism, news, getty, Royalty free, editorial, transaction, slideshow, finance, Microstock | Print | 1 Comment »

January 27, 2010 by pmelcher.

Before we go any further ( we spoke about the Ipad here already anyways), we need to point out something extremely important. There are people in this industry, when they talk, you listen. Jonathan Klein is one because who knows what other damage he will create with his roller company  and he lies a lot ( according to Klein. “We were the first people in the world to sell an image online,”). Ellen Boughn is another.

For those who don’t know Ellen ( are they any?) , let me explain : Ellen is one of these extremely rare person that have done it all. From editorial, to commerial stock, royalty free and Microstock, she has been deeply involved in every facet of this industry. Unlike others, she has gotten herself dirty with all aspects of licensing images from production to sales, from little to giant corporation. She has seen everything and pays attention to everything. She has an insight that is only surpassed by her intelligence. There is nothing that scares her and she has the curiosity of a 10 year old. She has met everybody that is anybody in this business and yet respects everyone the same way. She has a passion for photography that would put to shame anyone. She is so good that his master himself, Henri Cartier Bresson, offered her a signed print, something that he extremely rarely did.

To top it all, she is an independent thinker. She will tell you things the way they are, regardless of the consequences. She knows no camp but excellence and truth. Her incisive mind can be brutally honest  because she is not scared of anything or anyone.  She is an encyclopedia of knowledge that you will never read anywhere ( unless she publishes more books). She is one of the reason why I love this industry so much : It attracts some of the smartest, intelligent, witty, knowledgeable people on the planet. People with a vast culture and yet  constantly curious about everything.

Why do I write this ? Because Ellen has started her on blog. And if you only read one thing, that should be it. Amateur, pro, super pro, whatever side of this industry you are, this should be the first thing you read. You will never be offered such a rewarding experience, for free. So, stop reading this and go bookmark her blog and hold on to you socks.

http://www.ellenboughn.com/blog

We are not worthy..

Posted in license, multimedia, magazine, technology, commercial stock, Magnum, web 2.0, photojournalism, getty, Royalty free, corbis, editorial, transaction, Microstock | Print | 5 Comments »

January 14, 2010 by pmelcher.

There is nothing worst for a photographer, like for an actor, to be typecast. For Dennis Stock, who passed away this week, that is what happened. Ultra famous for the iconic images he took of James Dean just before he became famous, he had to drag this notoriety like a canon ball tied to his foot throughout his whole career. To a point that few people know the rest of his work. Which is a shame.

Dennis was a relationship photographer. Unlike Henri Cartier Bresson or Capa , Dennis wanted and needed to know his subjects very well before he would photograph them. He had to see their insides before taking pictures of their outside.  Maybe that is what he took out of his two weeks assisting Eugene Smith.

Incredibly fortunate to have worked as an assistant for some of the greatest name of photography early on in his career ( Eugene Smith, Gjon Mili), he also had extremely good contact with the photo beast of the time , Life Magazine. Unlike other original Magnum photographers, he was not known for his nice, cuddly ways. Direct, sometimes harsh, he did not hesitate to say what he thought, regardless of the consequences. His images somewhat reflect this. They are direct, have no artifice, and can be cruel sometimes. However, that was the cruelty that comes with reality and he never apologized for it because he didn’t feel responsible. The world as it is.

Dennis Stock photography could be separated in two  phases: His people years ( Hollywood, Jazz, Communities) in the first half of his career  and his nature years.  Somewhere in his photography search, he must either have become very disappointed with people, as he completely stop photographing them until his death. Maybe it was because he wanted to escape the incredibly suffocating success of his James Dean images and show that he could do great images without a human figure in them.

What is certain, is that like one his mentor Eugene Smith, he worked on his stories for a long, long them. He was nt a snaphot shooter, not an opportunity snapper. Weeks, months, if not years was not an uncommon period of time for him to complete a story. That his why he does not leave a huge body of work, but rather a very selective passionate vision of the world.

Every time a great photographer dies, it is another eye on the world that closes.

Magnum in Motion did a great piece on Dennis Stock and his work :

Posted in magazine, Magnum, celebrity, multimedia, slideshow, photojournalism, editorial | Print | 1 Comment »

December 30, 2009 by pmelcher.

It’s all about connection. Remenber, when you were a kid, people use to gather around a print photograph and talk about it. They would also want a copy and travel with it and show it to other people. In a way, photography was one of the first social networking hub.

Because of its highly physical structure, it was hard to get a large amount of people around a photograph and for them to connect via it.  Slides and projectors allowed for bigger groups to see , share, and discuss an image. As we see in   photo festival like Visa Pour l’ Image, it is still a great tool for people to commonly share and enjoy photography together at the same time. But so ephemeral and still so location based.

Magazines took the sharing to even bigger and wider groups but in the process cut the discussion umbilical cord, leaving each one as a unheard lonely voice. It was assumed that others enjoyed the same image as you had seen in the page of your magazine but there was no way to communicate with them. That role, poorly executed, was left to a single ringmaster/photo editor. But the message was not going through.

Then came sites like Flickr. People could and can connect around photography again. But this time, its is not just friends and family, it is also complete stranger. Regardless, photography true essence as a social tool was finally reborned. Because, lets face it, photography is useless if it cannot be shared.

It is the core of its nature  to be extremely social. We photograph because we want to share what we see and the way we see it. However, up to now, the medium that supports photography, mainly print publications and now online publications, have done a very poor job to exploit this. One lonely person, mostly located in a cubicle somewhere, picks an image that she/he likes and post/prints it. People see it, connect with it or not and the images vanishes. what a waste. And this is only for a very small fractions of images produced everyday. Those selected by bored photo editors.  That is not a life for a photograph.

Photography does not need Twitter or Facebook, it is the opposite. Social networking sites need photography for people to sign up, share and interact. People connect, react, share, argue, agree, discuss and love/hate around an image wherever it is, as long as the tools to communicate and to connect exist. People create accounts on Facebook and Twitter to connect and share photographs, not the opposite .

The best way to kill an image is to prevent people from being allowed to interact with it. That is probably why I hate  photography museum so much. While it allows a great many people to see an image, it completely kills any possible interaction with other viewers.”sssh” is the reigning word in a museum.

So, knowing this, where does that leave us ?  Well,  remember this graphic ?

This is the new marketplace. It is no longer the “one-to-many” that  we have seen in traditional media and sadly currently  replicated online, it is the “many-to-many”. The next generation of succesful businesspeople in photography will be the ones who learn to use photography’s social and viral nature and capitalize on it.  Instead of crowdsourcing photography, crowdsourcing photo editing. Let the users/viewers become their own photo editors and decide what images they would like to see and share. Let the images become the social network around which people gather and communicate, for whatever length of time they need. This is the hyperlink photography economy that some have been searching for.

With that in mind, have a happy, safe and wealthy 2010 !!

Posted in web 2.0, multimedia, license, technology, prosumer, flickr, editorial, slideshow, photojournalism, Microstock | Print | 3 Comments »